With a week to go, the demands on Neave’s time and energy meant he was no longer able to maintain his diary. The last entry is for Tuesday 28 January. It records a new addition to the team, Joan Hall, who had been elected MP for Keighley in 1970 but lost her seat in February 1974 and to whom Neave had taken a shine. She was thirty-nine, ‘most competent and popular’, and would man the phones as well as driving Mrs Thatcher around in her MGB GT sports car. That day, the see-saw of opinion seemed to have tipped Heath’s way. After all, he had ‘all the patronage and Establishment organisation behind him whereas we are amateurs’.48 But nonetheless he noted that though ‘there are allegedly signs that Heath support is growing and that he may win outright, our canvass does not support this.’
If Neave and his team were amateurs, they were energetic and skilful ones. He was generally regarded as quiet and unobtrusive, and in the opinion of Richard Ryder, who worked with him in Margaret Thatcher’s private office, ‘a shy man with men as well as women’.49 To succeed, Neave now had to transform himself into something he had never been – a schmoozer.
He proved unexpectedly good at it. Norman Tebbit recalled his experience of the Neave technique. ‘Airey suggested to me that Margaret Thatcher was the preferred candidate and I scratched my head a bit … I was of the view that we needn’t make our lives more difficult than [they] had to be and that selling a woman candidate to the Conservative Party would be a big step. Airey said, “Well come and talk to her … these reservations could be overcome.” I think most people thought that it would be inevitable that there would be a woman party leader before long, but most … took the view that it would be the Labour Party [that produced one] … I decided that was not the case and then I worked with Airey … to get Margaret elected.’50
Tebbit was not alone in having little personal knowledge of the candidate. There was no social ground in the Commons on which they were likely to meet. Neave arranged for small gatherings of backbenchers in the rooms of a West Country MP, Robert (‘Robin’) Cooke, for a cup of tea or a glass of wine, where they could form an impression of her. With the help of David James, MP for North Dorset, he also organised a series of lunches at the ‘ladies side’ of Boodle’s club, a private dining room where MPs brought their wives to meet Mrs Thatcher. Diana Neave was in support. According to one who was close to the arrangements, things ‘went very nicely’ and ‘a number of waverers were persuaded’.51 These events were markedly more successful than Ted Heath’s belated attempts at bonhomie. It was too late to start being nice now, and the lunches, dinners and visits to the Smoking Room that his team pressed him into did more harm than good.52
Neave was meticulous in his list-making, never taking a pledge at face value. ‘People were not straight,’ remembered Jonathan Aitken, then a young backbencher.53 ‘They were fearful that Heath would take revenge.’ Thus ‘people were sent off to double check. “We know X says he is going to vote Heath, but is he really?” They would go off to X’s best friend and grill them to find out his real intentions.’
All this was simply common sense and perfectly above board. There are many stories, though, of cases where Neave was more inventive, provoking subsequent accusations that he had employed ‘dark arts’ acquired in his intelligence service days to swing the result.
Aitken remembers being cornered by Sir John Rodgers one night in Pratt’s club when the sixty-eight-year-old member for Sevenoaks, who had broad intellectual interests and was by no means a reactionary, was in his cups. Rodgers disliked Heath but nonetheless felt he should continue as leader. He told Aitken that he had been approached by Neave and told, ‘John, you know Margaret’s not going to win but we’ve got to give Ted a jolt.’ Rodgers agreed and ‘Airey persuaded [him] to vote for Thatcher on the grounds that Heath needed a kick up the bum and then he’ll behave much better.’ When the results came through, ‘John was furious. “That fucker Neave – he said there was no chance of her winning!”’
Neave used the same technique when engaging in a clever piece of media manipulation. According to Richard Ryder, the night before the poll he spoke to Bob Carvel, political editor of the Evening Standard, an important publication in the pre-internet age, when its early editions could set the news agenda. He told the reporter that Heath’s figures were higher than his own canvass suggested. The story was carried in the first edition, which appeared before lunch, and Neave arranged for extra copies to be distributed around the Commons facilities. The idea was that members who wanted Heath out but intended to back candidates other than Thatcher who would emerge in the second round would get the message and make sure Ted did not survive.54
On Tuesday 4 February, in Committee Room 14 in the House, polling began. It closed at 3.30 p.m. and the first results based on ballots cast on the spot produced a tie. Postal votes determined the outcome. When they were counted, Thatcher had 130, Heath 119 and Fraser 16, with six abstentions and five spoiled ballots.
Mrs Thatcher had not won outright and there would have to be a second ballot. Nonetheless, that night the Neaves gave a party at Westminster Gardens. There was champagne and the TV cameras were allowed in. The celebrations were premature but understandable. Margaret Thatcher had defeated the incumbent, who now resigned. Whatever happened next, she was the moral victor. She had demonstrated those qualities that Neave had long identified in her: courage, boldness and determination. That did not mean that she would necessarily win the next round. But by hanging back, the candidates who now came forward made unconvincing leaders. A week later the second ballot was held. Thatcher got 146 votes, Willie Whitelaw 79, Jim Prior and Geoffrey Howe 19 each and John Peyton§§ 11. She had won by the margin required, and with higher support than Neave and Shelton’s figures had estimated. It was fitting that it was Airey who brought her the news as she waited in his small room in the Commons.
* Toby Low (1914–2000), educated Winchester and New College, Oxford; served in WW2 and in 1944 was the youngest brigadier in the British Army; Conservative MP for Blackpool North, 1945–62; created Baron Aldington, 1962; in 1989 awarded £1.5 million in libel damages arising from allegations concerning his supposed role in repatriating prisoners of war to the Soviet Union.
† Nigel Fisher (1913–96), educated Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; served in Welsh Guards in WW2 (MC 1945); Conservative MP for Hitchin, 1950–55, and Surbiton, 1955–83; knighted, 1974.
‡ Angus Maude (1912–93), educated Rugby and Oriel College, Oxford; journalist before becoming Conservative MP for Ealing South, 1950–58, and Stratford-on-Avon, 1963–83; known as ‘the Mekon’ because of his dome-like forehead; created Lord Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, 1983.
§ Harry Neil Marten (1916–85), educated Rossall School; in WW2, parachuted into France to work with the French Resistance; FCO, 1947–57; Conservative MP for Banbury, 1959–83; knighted, 1983.
¶ Neave, whose spelling and accuracy with names is usually punctilious, chose to spell it thus, although the correct form is ‘du Cann’.
** Her belief that she had Howe’s backing in the race would turn out to be mistaken.
†† Bernard Braine (1914–2000), educated Hendon County Grammar School; served North Staffordshire Regiment WW2; Conservative MP for Billericay, 1950–55, South East Essex, 1955–83; created Baron Braine of Wheatley, 2000. For many years unofficial UK ambassador to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London.
‡‡ William Rees-Davies (1916–1992), educated Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; commissioned Welsh Guards, 1939; invalided out after losing an arm in 1943; flamboyant barrister and QC, nicknamed the ‘one-armed bandit’; Conservative MP for Isle of Thanet, 1953–74, Thanet West, 1974–83.
§§ John Peyton (1919–2006), educated Eton and Trinity College, Oxford; commissioned in 15/19 Hussars, 1939; captured in Belgium, 1940, and POW until 1945; barrister; Conservative MP for Yeovil, 1951–83; created Lord Peyton of Yeovil, 1983.
12
Warrior in a Dark Blue Suit
As Margaret Thatcher began sel
ecting her Shadow Cabinet, she told Humphrey Atkins she felt ‘a special obligation’ to Neave, as well as to her other staunchest political friend, Keith Joseph.1 The implication was that he would occupy an important place in her shadow front bench and that his desires would, if possible, be accommodated. A week after her triumph, the appointments were announced. Neave was to be spokesman for Northern Ireland.
According to his family, the choice was his. ‘Mrs Thatcher said, “You can have anything,” and he said, “I’d very much like to have Northern Ireland,”’ was Marigold’s recollection.2 Mrs Thatcher suggested later that the initiative had come from her. She wrote that his killing had been ‘a terrible blow, because I’d never thought of anyone else for Northern Ireland … He understood the “Irish factor”. He’d studied it.’3
In fact, before he asked for the job, Neave had shown very little interest in Northern Ireland. Judged on his experience, he was surely better suited for Defence, which went instead to George Younger, who had no obvious outstanding qualifications for the post and lasted less than a year in it. Instead, Neave chose a task that seemed to promise only frustration and failure, along with a high level of personal risk. In 1975, Northern Ireland was stuck in a routine of almost daily bombings, attacks on the security forces and sectarian tit-for-tat murders that a massive British Army presence seemed to be incapable of ending. The political landscape was barren. The Sunningdale Agreement overseen in 1973 by the then Northern Ireland Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, by which Nationalists and Unionists would share power in a devolved assembly, had collapsed less than a year before and the province was under direct rule from Westminster. Why had Neave been so eager to grasp the poisoned chalice?
The family was as surprised as everyone else. ‘I’ve been asking myself that question endlessly,’ said William Neave. ‘Why did my father take on what at the time must have been the most unattractive job [in politics].’4 Neave, though, ‘never spoke about it’. In the end, William could ‘only assume that this was all something that came back to the war. Colditz and [IS9].’ Marigold too felt that he saw it as somehow a continuation of his wartime service. ‘It was partly the element of danger,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want to be in a cushy [job]. He wanted to make a difference.’ The war had ‘coloured it for him. He’d done so many [seemingly] impossible things and succeeded in them and maybe thought he could do this.’
As well as his Northern Ireland responsibilities, Mrs Thatcher also appointed him head of her private office. It turned out that his involvement was only limited. The real work was done by a young former Daily Telegraph journalist, Richard Ryder, and his assistant, Caroline Stephens (the couple later married). Diana, however, kept a benign eye on the employees. According to Caroline, she was ‘very much around and incredibly kind and friendly to the staff’, often inviting ‘us girls’ over to the flat for a drink.5 As Airey’s importance grew, so did her role as his supporter and promoter, and her presence softened his image. Grey Gowrie, poet, intellectual and a romantic figure on the Tory front bench during Heath’s premiership who went on to ministerial office under Mrs Thatcher, thought Neave a ‘rather uptight, buttoned figure’. Diana, however, was a ‘very, very charming woman … she wasn’t at all self-centred. She was really interested in other people and what they were doing.’6 Neave needed a goodwill ambassador. He did not fit in comfortably with the party machinery, and according to Alistair Cooke, his political adviser from 1977, was ‘distrustful of many elements of [it] because it had served Heath’.7 Nor, in Ryder’s view, did he ‘have a close relationship with any other members of the Shadow Cabinet’.8 The monetarist theories which preoccupied the team around Thatcher were ‘out of his eyeline … He wouldn’t have read [Milton] Friedman or [Friedrich von] Hayek or anything like that.’ Instead, he was ‘very self-contained’, preferring to concentrate on the new job. ‘Ireland took up a hell of a lot of his time. He was totally committed … absolutely dedicated to it.’
He was starting off with a mind unclouded by expertise. Between January 1973 and February 1975 there are fewer than thirty mentions of Northern Ireland in his meticulously kept diary, and these are mostly passing references to outrages or big political developments. What they reveal is a broad sense that political initiatives are unlikely to work until the gunmen have been defeated. Commenting in August 1973 on newspaper reports of a ‘breach between the government and Eire’, he declared that ‘no one seems to be able to concentrate on what matters – to get on top of the IRA in Northern Ireland’.9
They also show him to be a supporter of the death penalty for political murder. On 11 March 1973, he was ‘horrified’ to learn of the killing of Sir Richard Sharples, the Governor of Bermuda, by assassins belonging to a black power group. Sharples was a former Conservative MP and an Eton contemporary. The Daily Express called Neave to ask his views on capital punishment. He told them ‘things had changed since abolition and there should be the death penalty for political murder.’ The launch of a campaign in mainland Britain by the IRA strengthened this view. After the Birmingham pub bombings of 21 November 1974, which killed 21 and injured 182, he noted, ‘Demand for the death penalty is growing everywhere and even Labour MPs think the IRA terrorists should be executed.’ He felt that ‘references to “hanging” confuse the discussion. The penalty if it is a war, which it is, should be shooting.’10
The last sentence summed up Neave’s attitude. Britain was at war with Republican terrorists who wanted to impose their will on the majority by violence, both in Ulster and Britain generally. Thus it was à la guerre comme à la guerre, and the rules of peacetime no longer applied.
Pitiless opposition to the IRA did not imply any particular liking for the Unionists. In March 1974, he remarked that the United Ulster Unionists who opposed the Sunningdale Agreement in parliament ‘looked like gangsters’.11 When, in May, a combination of parliamentary pressure, paramilitary violence and a strike by Protestant workers that brought the province to a standstill killed off Sunningdale, he wrote that ‘many people would be glad to see these people out of the House of Commons.’12 Neave’s attitude soon changed, and he came to be seen as one of their most reliable champions at Westminster.
In forming his policies, Neave’s outlook appears to have been influenced by a booklet produced by the Bow Group called Do You Sincerely Want to Win? It was written after a visit to Ulster in the summer of 1972 by four young Tories who interviewed leading players, including the IRA commander in Londonderry, Martin McGuinness.13 One of the authors, Peter Lilley, claimed that he had been told by Neave’s friend Ian Gow (who from 1978 shared his NI spokesman duties) that ‘it was his bible.’* There are certainly many similarities between the report’s thesis and Neave’s subsequent approach.
It declared that it was a mistake to assume that ‘a minimum military response to terrorism would facilitate negotiation and the achievement of a settlement acceptable to both communities’, Nationalist [Catholic] and Unionist [Protestant]. Similarly, it was wrong to think that intensifying counter-insurgency measures would automatically freeze any progress on the political front. Thus ‘the logic of the situation … demands that from now on no effort be spared in rooting out the IRA … Can terrorism be defeated? The answer must be an emphatic “yes.”’14
These words were written in 1972, but given Neave’s existing views, what had since passed can only have increased their relevance. After seeking to snuff out the IRA by rounding up and interning suspected members (a policy that increased Catholic sympathy for the gunmen), the Heath government had tried conciliation. In July 1972, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, flew an IRA deputation to London for talks. IRA and Loyalist prisoners were granted ‘special category status’ which, despite government denials that this was the case, was taken by the paramilitaries to mean official recognition that they were ‘political prisoners’ or prisoners of war.† There was little to show for the concessions. Ceasefires had come and gone but the respites were always temporary. The number of deaths
among civilians, security forces and paramilitaries had reached a peak in 1972 with 496.15 But 263 were killed in 1973, 303 in 1974 and another 267 would die in 1975.
On the political front, there seemed little or nothing to lose by taking a tough line on security. The brief moment of hope offered by Sunningdale, when moderate Unionists and Nationalists came together, had been illusory. Neave soon came to believe that for now there was no point in pursuing new initiatives and the priority was to smash the IRA.
Since the beginning, both main parties had agreed on a bipartisan approach to dealing with the Troubles. Security policy and political initiatives in Ulster were removed from the political battlefield and the convention had been established that Government and Opposition should strive to show a united front. From the outset, Neave’s attitude put strains on the understanding. He was soon a persistent critic of what he regarded as the placatory approach of the Northern Ireland Secretary, Merlyn Rees. Since January 1975 there had been a fitful ceasefire by the IRA, whose leadership believed that the British government was considering disengagement.16 In return, Rees agreed to start ‘the phased release of those detained under internment’.17
The Man Who Was Saturday Page 26